GENEVA — A group of leading public health and climate experts has renewed calls for the World Health Organization to declare climate change a global public health emergency, arguing that existing international mechanisms are inadequate to address what they describe as an escalating threat to human health.
The appeal, advanced by the independent Pan-European Commission on Climate and Health convened by WHO/Europe, urges the U.N. health agency to recognize climate change as a Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC), the organization's highest level of international health alert. The commission said such a declaration would elevate climate-related health risks within global health governance and strengthen international coordination.
The commission released the recommendation in May, but the proposal has gained renewed attention as countries across Europe and elsewhere confront severe heatwaves and other extreme weather events linked by scientists to climate change. Recent weeks have seen record temperatures in parts of Europe, prompting health alerts and renewed concern over heat-related illness and deaths.
According to WHO estimates cited by the commission, climate change is expected to cause about 250,000 additional deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 from undernutrition, malaria, diarrhoeal disease and heat stress alone. The commission argued that the International Health Regulations, which underpin the PHEIC framework, were designed primarily for acute infectious disease outbreaks and are not suited to a chronic but intensifying global threat such as climate change.
Robb Butler, WHO/Europe's Special Representative for Climate and Health, said in a WHO interview that the commission's recommendation was intended to challenge whether current international health mechanisms adequately reflect the scale of climate-related risks.
"They're looking for an alarm bell to press," Butler said, adding that climate change represents "a catastrophic event" even though it does not fit the existing architecture of the International Health Regulations.
The commission also recommended accelerating the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies, strengthening climate-resilient health systems and expanding public health measures to reduce climate-related illness. It said governments should integrate climate and health policies more closely as extreme weather increasingly affects healthcare services, food security and vulnerable populations.
WHO has identified extreme heat as one of the deadliest consequences of climate change, noting that heat-related mortality has risen sharply in recent decades and that hundreds of thousands of heat-related deaths occur globally each year.
As of July 10, WHO had not announced plans to declare climate change a Public Health Emergency of International Concern, and the commission's recommendation remained under discussion without an official decision from the organization.
